I’ve been getting a lot of emails about book club lately, mostly from newcomers wondering how it works: is there a secret handshake? Can you just pop in? So, here’s the deal—and a preview of what we’ll be reading over the next few months.
Book club meets once a month on Zoom. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’re welcome to join (but please do read the book—or at least as much of it as you can—first!). I send out a Doodle poll every month to find the best time to meet and then circulate a Zoom link. Since we’ve got participants joining from both sides of the pond, we tend to meet in the late evening UK time, late afternoon Eastern time, and around the lunch hour on the Pacific Coast.
The book selection protocol varies. Suggestions are always welcome. Sometimes I put a few books up for a vote. Sometimes I play benevolent dictator—usually (selfishly) because I’ve just read something I need to talk about.
So far, we’ve read:
Anne Harrington’s Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer
Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution
Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans
Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls.
Hannah Barnes’ Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children
Jules Gill-Peterson’s Histories of the Transgender Child
Mary Harrington’s Feminism Against Progress
Hadley Freeman’s Good Girls
Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails
Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano, and Stella O’Malley’s When Kids Say They’re Trans
Suzanne O’Sullivan’s The Sleeping Beauties
Alex Byrne’s Trouble with Gender
Ethan Watters and Richard Ofshe’s Making Monsters (April 2024)
If a laidback conversation about books sounds good to you, please join us! We’re a friendly group.
I'm excited to talk about Histories of the Transgender Child. Read it as research for TOMBOY and didn't have anyone to discuss it with!
I'm really sad I'm gonna have to miss today. Hope y'all have a great time!